As
a regulars of UNIQLO, my eyes were captured by this headline of news-“UNIQLO副品牌GU 淘寶價吸客”. Surprisingly, this piece of report contains a lot of bilingual
features that I would like to share with you.
First, glancing through this news (you can just have a quick look
on the article and need not to focus on the content of the news: http://hk.news.yahoo.com/uniqlo%E5%89%AF%E5%93%81%E7%89%8Cgu-%E6%B7%98%E5%AF%B6%E5%83%B9%E5%90%B8%E5%AE%A2-225625221--finance.html), you will
find there are Chinese words mixed with English letters. So this embodies the
language mixing.
Secondly, the most frequently appeared words are “UNIQLO” and “GU”. With my increasing sense on
translation, I wonder why the reporter did not do the translation for the brand
names. And I think acting as a symbolic capital may be an explanation for this.
Third, when I looked into the details of the news, it is said that
the brand name “GU” was named because of the homonyms of “kyu”, which has the same
pronunciation of “nine” in Japanese, meaning a particular pricing strategy. This embodies
domestication, which bilingual features are hidden.
Lastly, the above finding makes me curious about the origin of “UNIQLO”. So I did some research on
the Internet and found that the original idea of this brand was “Unique Clothing Warehouse”, and “UNIQLO”was the abbreviation of “Unique Clothing”. However, something went
wrong in the business registration which people mistakenly wrote “C” to “Q”. Since then, a new word was
created for the brand. From this example, we can see that new word can be
invented in such a “silly” way.
In a nutshell, I think bilingualism, whether we pay attention to
it or not, is closely related to our daily life. To be honest, I did not
pretend or prepare to write the blog at this moment. It is a surprise for me
that I can easily got something to share just by a simple browse. I hope all of
you enjoy applying what we have learnt in this course in our daily life. It’s pretty funny! :D
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